1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to multi-component multi-phase type polymeric shaped materials that use conducting polymeric compounds, and to functional devices using the same. The present invention is applicable to those devices using conducting polymeric compounds, such as solar batteries, photoelectric conversion devices, light-emitting devices, displays, optical modulation devices, organic FET devices, capacitors, and various sensor devices.
2. Background Art
Semiconducting or conducting polymers, such as conjugated polymers, are excellent in processability, for instance, they can readily be made into thin films. They are therefore promising materials for use in a variety of functional devices such as photoelectric conversion devices, FET devices and light-emitting devices. In these functional devices, there exist various types of interfaces such as an interface of semiconductor-semiconductor type, and an interface of semiconductor-conductor type. The functional devices can fulfil their functions when carriers such as holes or electrons pass through such an interface, or mutually interact at the interface. To allow such functional devices to fulfil their functions more fully, it is important that they have large interfacial areas and that phases or layers contained in them are in close contact at the interface between them. It is however difficult to make the interfacial area large. Moreover, the phases or layers tend to deteriorate or separate at the interface between them because an electric field or stress is severely applied to the interface in many cases. For this reason, the above-described functional devices undergo lowering of durability due to the deterioration of the interfaces, or decrease in speed of response or output power due to their interfacial areas that are not sufficiently large. U.S. Pat. No. 5,563,424 discloses such a technique that a three-dimensional bicontinuous phase separation structure obtainable from a composition that is a blend of polymers is utilized in order to obtain an increased interfacial area. The interfacial area can surely be increased to some extent by the use of this technique. However, the composition for use in this technique is a blend system, so that two phases in the system are not chemically bonded but merely in contact with each other at the interface between them. Therefore, the two phases tend to separate at the interface between them, bringing about deterioration of performance, such as lowering of durability.
As mentioned above, in a variety of functional devices, interfaces that are formed in the devices do not have sufficiently large areas, and are poor in durability. Therefore, the devices have not fully fulfilled their functions.
Under the foregoing circumstances, there have been demanded a functional device having a device structure in which phases are chemically bonded at the interface between them, and the interface has a sufficiently large area, and is extremely good in durability; and a multi-component multi-phase type polymeric shaped material for use in such a functional device.
A first functional device of the present invention comprises a multi-component multi-phase type polymeric shaped material containing, at least, chains A and B that are hole- or electron-conducting polymer chains, wherein a phase A that is an aggregate of the chains A and a phase B that is an aggregate of the chains B constitute a three-dimensional bicontinuous nano phase separation structure, and, at the same time, are chemically bonded at the interface between them, and has such a device structure that electrode terminals are respectively connected to the phase A and the phase B.
A second functional device of the present invention comprises, at least, hole- or electron-conducting phases A and B, wherein the phase A and the phase B constitute at least one three-dimensional bicontinuous phase separation structure selected from the group consisting of OBDD structures (ordered-bicontinuous double-diamond structures) and Gyroid structures, and has such a device structure that electrode terminals are respectively connected to the phase A and the phase B.
A third functional device of the present invention comprises a laminated structure in which hole-, electron, or ion-conducting phases A and B in sheet form are alternately laminated, and has such a device structure that at least one pair of electrodes are disposed so that they interpenetrate into the laminated structure at 4 points or more, and, at the same time, penetrate the interface between the phases A and B laminated.
A multi-component multi-phase type polymeric shaped material of the present invention comprises, at least, chains A and B that are hole- or electron-conducting polymer chains, wherein a phase A that is an aggregate of the chains A and a phase B that is an aggregate of the chains B constitute a three-dimensional bicontinuous nano phase separation structure, and, at the same time, are chemically bonded at the interface between them.
The present invention can provide functional devices that are quick in response and good in durability. Further, since a device structure equivalent to a laminated structure composed of thin films can be made from a polymeric material comprising a block or graft copolymer, by subjecting it to self-developing structure formation, it is possible to simplify the process of producing functional devices. The present invention is thus effective in reducing the production cost. Furthermore, since hole- or electron-conducting phases are used in the present invention, there can be obtained improved speed of response as compared with conventional phase-separation-type functional devices using ion-conducting phases. In addition, layers or phases contained in the functional devices of the present invention are chemically bonded, so that the functional devices scarcely get out of order due to the separation of these layers phases.